Pakistan-born Mohammed Amin, 40, and brother Aftab Ahmed, 38, claimed a string of handouts for more than a decade.

The pair masterminded the fraud by getting their wives to claim benefits as single mums.

In fact, both couples were living in homes in Ilford, Essex, owned by the brothers.

The Daily Star Sunday can reveal that one of the conmen hid an international property portfolio worth up to a million pounds from the authorities.

Amin, who runs a pizza shop in Bethnal Green, east London, owns two plush apartments in Dubai, as well as property in Hungary and Essex.

Our investigation revealed he snapped up a string of properties while his wife was pleading poverty to obtain handouts.

In 2007 he bought a pad in a posh ­suburb outside Hungary’s capital ­Budapest, said to be worth at least £135,000.

A year later he splashed out £130,000 on a luxury apartment in the Lincoln Park ­Residential ­development in ­Dubai, which is now believed to have soared in value.

And in May 2011, he spent £120,000 on a second posh flat in the Lago Vista complex in an upmarket suburb of the desert state.

The greedy conman also owns a £220,000 three-bed house in Ilford, ­Essex, where his brother Ahmed and sister-in-law Sobia Shaheen, 31, were living and claiming benefits.

Meanwhile, Amin lives in a £230,000 three-bed house in Ilford owned by his Ford ­worker brother Ahmed, from where his wife Kauser Akhtar, 37, was claiming handouts as a single mum. All four cheats were sentenced at ­London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday after pleading guilty to benefit fraud offences at earlier hearings.

Ahmed and Amin both received 20 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years. Shaheen got two months ­suspended for 12 months, while Akhtar was sentenced to one month, suspended for a year.

Shaheen got longer as she has a ­previous benefit fraud conviction from 2006.

The scam was exposed after officials at Redbridge Council in east London ­received a tip-off.

All four were arrested in October 2011 when documents and computers were seized from their homes.

The council had paid £87,338 housing benefit to Shaheen between 1998 and 2010 on the basis she was on income support and had to rent her home.

But the mum-of-four failed to inform them she was living in a property owned by her husband’s brother.

Shaheen claimed she had signed the benefit application forms under ­instruction from her husband.

The council also paid £141,711 ­housing benefit to Akhtar at the other Ilford ­address between 1996 and 2011 after she told them she was also a single mum on income support.

In addition, Akhtar received £11,224 in council tax benefit and £74,177 in ­income support from the Government.

Amin and Ahmed have repaid the benefits to Redbridge Council but ­financial investigators are now trying to recover the profits from their scam.

It is trying to identify if there are any other properties owned by Amin or his brother which may have been sold.